


Reality

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Series: Level 10: Agents of Shield Fic [6]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: 4x21 "The Return", Angst, F/M, Reunions, The Framework
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-12
Updated: 2017-05-12
Packaged: 2018-10-30 22:15:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10885998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: What is real in a world where two lives can be lived by the same person?  Jemma struggles with the question, but some things are more real than real.





	Reality

Reality.

Never before had it seemed such a fragile thing.

Her feet carry her, dream-like, across the metal floor.  This world _feels_ real.  The smell of recycled air, with a lingering hint of smoke.  Cotton fibers against her skin, soft and familiar.  Her hair spilling against the back of her neck.  She swallows, saliva coating her tongue, and that feels real, too.

But it felt real _there,_  in a world built of code, of numbers, of science twisted and wrong.  She’d only been there a few terrible, frightening days.  Not a lifetime.

Her stomach aches, a hollow pain spreading out within her until she feels the dullness in her fingertips and toes.   _It wasn’t like a dream.  It was real._   Real enough to kill.

She stops.  Turns toward an open door.  

He’s bent over himself, small in the starkness of the sheer white cell.  He sits six feet from her, or is it a thousand star systems?  She isn’t sure which is harder to cross.

Reality pulses, frail and hungry, blinding and fierce, in each beat of her heart.  It drives her, forces her forward.  She sees his hands trembling, shoulders jerking when he catches sight of her from the corner of his eye; sees how he turns his face away from her in a desperate retreat.

But the wounds of other lives and other worlds have never deterred them before, and she wraps herself in the real, in the memory of who they are and who they’ve been and who they’re going to be.  She crosses the distance and  sits beside him and he shrinks further into himself.  

 _This is not the end._   She reaches out, her hand gentle as she slides it across his back, strong when she grips his shoulder.  And reality thrums between them, a brilliant searing wound.  It’s woven into how he finally weeps against her, woven into the way his hand clings to hers, woven into the sound of his breathing, broken, ragged, raw.

The tears on her cheeks are hot, the weight of him against her solid and warm, the pain an agonizing bloom, the joy too bright to bear.  She’s missed him so, despite it all; missed him more than she could ever say.  

And _that_ is real.

**Author's Note:**

> I CAN'T EVEN HANDLE THESE TWO, THEY ARE BREAKING MY HEART
> 
> *ahem* what I mean to say is that this was a beautifully acted scene and I did not sit and watch it eight times in a row after finishing this episode


End file.
